If Reddick were here, we'd still be short an OF, since we wouldn't have Sweeney, who I think is better than Reddick anyways. Theoretically, finding a guy who can play a competent LF for a few weeks (or to platoon with McDonald) shouldn't be that hard, but its hard to identify that guy in the organization. Any potential free agent fits?

If Reddick were here, we'd still be short an OF, since we wouldn't have Sweeney, who I think is better than Reddick anyways. Theoretically, finding a guy who can play a competent LF for a few weeks (or to platoon with McDonald) shouldn't be that hard, but its hard to identify that guy in the organization. Any potential free agent fits?

Isn't Kroeger exactly the sort of AAAA-shuttle player you're talking about here?

Assuming the reports are correct, it's only supposed to be about 2 weeks until Crawford's ready, at which point there's no point in carrying another LHH outfielder (although I can still see the utility of keeping Lin around).

A friend of mine wants to trade back for Reddick. No thanks for me, he's bad luck. The guy blocking him gets hurt and the guy he's traded for gets hurt.

I do want that other outfielder they'll have soon (with lower costs than previously, of course), but unfortunately realize it'll never happen. And Carl won't play Center, even though one would think he still has the speed for it.

You're applauding yet another use of this strawman? No one on this board argued that none of the Sox top players could get hurt. No one argued that the team wasn't going to suffer injuries or that injuries shouldn't be factored into predictions. The group of posters who keep throwing these one liners out aren't stupid enough to think anyone was actually arguing this, so the other possibility is that they're pissy and trolling because of it.

I liked the joke. I don't know how you can tell what other people think/or were thinking. It must be nice to be clairvoyant.

Lighten up chief.

Wait... so now we can't respond to what people actually post because we can't also read their minds? His intent is pretty clear, and that you find the joke funny is exactly what I'm talking about. The joke isn't funny because it's a mock post targeted at a position that absolutely no one has taken. There's been a group of posters who have been railing against this position for weeks now, dropping one liners like that into threads at random. They bring nothing of value to the board and exist for no reason other than to antagonize.

But whatever. If that's what passes for main board material these days, it's probably too late to do anything about it. So yuck it up.

That's because when those posters articulate their difference of opinion, they're shouted down. I said this personally- I don't understand how people can predict win totals based on 'talent' alone when there are many intangibles like injuries, personal problems of players and managers, etc that come into play. We can revisit the prediction thread if you like and see how that panned out.

Who are you to tell me what's funny? You're the arbiter of funny? Like I said, lighten up. If you don't like what we have to say, there's an ignore function on here. You won't hurt my feelings.

This is verbal communication? Like face to face contact? You can see my body language through my computer screen? News to me.

EDIT: I'm not going to derail this thread any more with this, because I respect the people who run this site. If anyone has anything more to say about this, either PM me or let's take it to P&G or whatever.

That's because when those posters articulate their difference of opinion, they're shouted down. I said this personally- I don't understand how people can predict win totals based on 'talent' alone when there are many intangibles like injuries, personal problems of players and managers, etc that come into play. We can revisit the prediction thread if you like and see how that panned out.

Who are you to tell me what's funny? You're the arbiter of funny? Like I said, lighten up. If you don't like what we have to say, there's an ignore function on here. You won't hurt my feelings.

Again, no one has taken this position. Is your reading comprehension really that bad? Seriously, not a single poster on this site made their predictions without taking injuries and other variables into account. Not one.

Funny may be contextual, but when a joke relies on something that is patently and completely false, the foundation of the joke crumbles. I guess you might find the beating of a strawman amusing, though. To each their own.

Great, the Sox have less depth. They're more susceptible to injuries. You understand that there's no guarantee the Sox are going to get injured, right?

The Sox get 25+ starts from Lester, Beckett, and Buchholz, and three decent half seasons out of Dice K, Bard, and Doubront, I'm going to feel really good taking my chances with Aceves, Silva, and the rest of the drek for the rest of the games.

I'm not trying to pick on or isolate Ras here, just using an example. I see the word 'luck' thrown around a lot in that thread. Which, as far as I'm concerned, isn't quantifiable. I don't make predictions because I have no idea how the season is going to pan out vis a vis who gets injured, who gets divorced, so on and so forth.

Let me chime in for what it's worth. I've had shoulder issues on both sides. My left shoulder would pop out all the time after I did it the first time playing ice hockey.(1991) I have done it at least 25 times in my life. After the first few, I got used to it and, frankly, I would pop it back in and rest for a week to two weeks and I could be back to whatever I wanted to do. I even did it on my way to a tennis tournament in 2008 and I was still able to play in the tourney.(non serving arm, of course)

Because my left shoulder always popped out, I overdid it with my right arm. I had a larbum tear(SLAP) in my shoulder, I got it fixed with surgery in March of 2011. That was NOT fun and the healing took a while. I had to stay immobilized for 6 weeks and it took 4-5 months to get to 90%, a year to get to 100%. I still can't really play tennis or volleyball or softball.

Now I'm not a professional athlete and I know Arod came back from a labral hip tear in 3 months, but let me just say that I am really, really hoping it was just a subluxation and not a labrum tear. If it's the labrum, it's going to be months, not weeks no matter how fast Ells heals. If it's a subluxation, it could be 5-6 weeks.

From what I read/heard, his thinking was that Lin is a stop-gap call-up until they get a veteran to help replace Ellsbury

This does not bode well for their view of Ellsbury's prognosis, if it's true. If Crawford will be back in 2-3 weeks and Ellsbury in 6-8, it seems like overkill to trade for a veteran. But it makes perfect sense if Ells is out for the season.

EDIT: I'm not going to derail this thread any more with this, because I respect the people who run this site. If anyone has anything more to say about this, either PM me or let's take it to P&G or whatever.

Yeah for real Blacken. Maybe I am a moron, but at least I didn't have to change my screen name because I was too embarrassed to post under my original one.

This does not bode well for their view of Ellsbury's prognosis, if it's true. If Crawford will be back in 2-3 weeks and Ellsbury in 6-8, it seems like overkill to trade for a veteran. But it makes perfect sense if Ells is out for the season.

It's Ellsbury, so it's entirely possible they had to glue his shoulder back on with epoxy cement.

However, it's also entirely possible that Rosenthal has no clue and the veteran help implied will be Crawford in 2-3 weeks.

If Ellsbury is being placed on the 15 day DL, it sounds like they're hoping it won't require surgery which I'll take as a good sign. It could just be a preliminary move that will allow them to call up a replacement while they sort things out further, but I'm crossing my fingers that the 15 day DL is being used because they think four to six weeks of physical therapy will get him back on the field.

This does not bode well for their view of Ellsbury's prognosis, if it's true. If Crawford will be back in 2-3 weeks and Ellsbury in 6-8, it seems like overkill to trade for a veteran. But it makes perfect sense if Ells is out for the season.

The three guys mentioned are scrap heap guys. They'd actually be fine for stop gap depth but not the type of guys you'd want if it's for a full season.

If Ellsbury is being placed on the 15 day DL, it sounds like they're hoping it won't require surgery which I'll take as a good sign. It could just be a preliminary move that will allow them to call up a replacement while they sort things out further, but I'm crossing my fingers that the 15 day DL is being used because they think four to six weeks of physical therapy will get him back on the field.

There's absolutely no downside to running him through thorough testing and prescribed rest while on the 15-day DL, even if the ultimate determination is that surgery is necessary.

Unless they want to activate a non-roster replacement player, and that's really what the bullpen DFA-chum-bucket is for anyway.

The three guys mentioned are scrap heap guys. They'd actually be fine for stop gap depth but not the type of guys you'd want if it's for a full season.

You're right, I missed the names. Wow. None of those guys looks like enough of an upgrade over the Pawtucket guys to be worth giving anything up for, certainly not for a few weeks. So if they do pick someone of that caliber up, it suggests that they're not only worried about Ellsbury's recovery but maybe Crawford's as well, and just desperate for warm healthy bodies till Kalish comes back.

In fact, they produced two; one is injured and they traded the other away. Which is problematic in its own right, but they are doing a good job identifying and developing prospects.

It was doubly silly since they also picked up on the cheap a player who's played almost 3000 innings of CF over the course of his major league career (Ross.) While he only played 22 games there last year, he played 89 games there in 2010.

No player development machine in the world can be ready to fill in for every emergency or injury. That's why you sign guys like Ross. Bitching that the player development machine wasn't ready this second to have a guy there to make the leap (while Kalish is ready but hurt) strikes me as patently unfair.

It certainly doesn't help when some of your key chips are handed over for a 1B.

That 1B is one of the elite players in all of baseball and was acquired while in the prime of his career. For a team that's supposedly going to be in the thick of the WS hunt year after year, that's an excellent use of farm system resources.

I'm much rather do that than spend another 80 million on a Lackey or even more on a 31 year old Crawford.

The three guys mentioned are scrap heap guys. They'd actually be fine for stop gap depth but not the type of guys you'd want if it's for a full season.

They should be looking for a guy who's a decent reserve corner OF who hits LH, and can stay on the roster after everyone else is healthy, at the expense of McDonald (whom I love as a role player, BTW).

They should be looking at starters on second-division / rebuilding clubs who are in their FA walk year, not guys like the Rosenthal trio who've barely been seeing MLB action.*

Linares and Lin and Repko cover McDonald in case of an injury to Ross. Once Kalish is healthy, he can become the new starter in case of an injury to Crawford, Ellsbury, or Sweeney, but you still have the new acquisition for depth. Because there will be times when two of the starters are out.

*This is hysterical ... the only guy I can find that fits that description is Luke Scott.

You're right, I missed the names. Wow. None of those guys looks like enough of an upgrade over the Pawtucket guys to be worth giving anything up for, certainly not for a few weeks. So if they do pick someone of that caliber up, it suggests that they're not only worried about Ellsbury's recovery but maybe Crawford's as well, and just desperate for warm healthy bodies till Kalish comes back.

Even if Crawford is only a few weeks away and they're confident about him returning to form, there's no reason not to explore options to minimize the size of the hole they could potentially dig for themselves with the loss of Ellsbury in the short term. The AL East is tough as hell this year. Willfully risking games because someone is *only* a few weeks away doesn't strike me as a wise approach to this situation. Not that I think you're suggesting this... I just don't think reports of them looking at outside options necessarily means anything about their outlook on Ellsbury.

In fact, they produced two; one is injured and they traded the other away. Which is problematic in its own right, but they are doing a good job identifying and developing prospects.

In fact, the Sox signed no less than five LHH OF prospects who demonstrated legitimate MLB CF potential in the five years between 2005-2009 -- Ellsbury himself, Kalish, Reddick, Westmoreland, and Fuentes.

Two were traded, and the other three currently suffer from long-term debilitating injuries. TINSTAALHHOFP? Failure of the organization? Or maybe it really is just bad luck.

for a total of 1969, .247/.305/.372 if you want to be technical, but an improvement in RF could certainly get them up to .320/.400 for OBP and SLG this year. But that's not really the point. The point is that last year's team, even with a .247/.305/.372 slash line from their catchers, short stops and right fielders was still the highest scoring offense in baseball. If they have tread water or better in those positions, then the offense should not be in trouble, and is certainly not going to be a bigger problem than losing Ellsbury's bat entirely.

I gave those 6 positions an improvement over last season. Even still, the team essentially moved the suck from those positions off the roster and brought in similar suck to the positions.

Pitching was the problem last year, not the bats. Arguing the offense wasn't good enough to start the year because they were "only" as good as last year is idiotic. No team in the majors scored as many runs as the Red Sox. Coming into this season, the offense was just fine, even if they regressed a bit.

Nobody is arguing that pitching wasn't the problem. What people who are not ultra optimists are arguing is that in order for the team to be the best offense in baseball to, you know, keep the team in the race, we should expect similar production/no injuries to the lineup like last season. Most of us looked at last season and were thrilled there were no major injuries and very good production from the top 5. The thing is, the team was the best offense because of that and were capable of masking the very poor production from those positions. But if there is poorer production from the top 5 or injuries, like now, the team will be unable to mask the terrible production that is likely to come from those 6 players. It's a problem and you have been very ignorant of this possibility. I looked at it like there would be some regression and the very real possibility to have some injuries to the top 5 batters. Now we have it and it's very troubling. Your dependency to look at the production/non-injuries from last season and think it will carry over to this year is why you are called ultra optimistic.

Ras's soon to be infamous "You realize there is no guarantee they will get injured" personifies this line of thinking.

So again, I don't see your point unless your point. There is simply no way that having Aviles, Punto, Ross, Sweeney, Salty and Shoppach getting 2100 or so PA's is a bigger problem than losing Ellsbury for a huge chunk of the year. At worst, they were still a top 5 offense in the AL coming into the season, and that's with as dismal a view of the lineup as is even close to reasonable.

Of course you don't see the point. Ellsbury's production last season was a big reason why those 6 players and their production was masked. Even if he didn't get injured, there is no reason to think he would produce at the same rate as last season. Your "best offense in baseball" and "tread water" lines is far to dependent on this. I don't expect the ultra optimist in you to see this. Injuries aside, your top 5 offense this season is still to dependent of this line of thinking.

You're applauding yet another use of this strawman? No one on this board argued that none of the Sox top players could get hurt. No one argued that the team wasn't going to suffer injuries or that injuries shouldn't be factored into predictions. The group of posters who keep throwing these one liners out aren't stupid enough to think anyone was actually arguing this, so the other possibility is that they're pissy and trolling because of it.

No player development machine in the world can be ready to fill in for every emergency or injury. That's why you sign guys like Ross. Bitching that the player development machine wasn't ready this second to have a guy there to make the leap (while Kalish is ready but hurt) strikes me as patently unfair.